A decade after his William Faulkner Award–winning first novel A Long and Happy Life, Reynolds Price began a serious study of the Hebrew and Greek narratives that form the Bible. Seeking the linguistic and literary roots of the Bible stories he had known since childhood—of patriarchs, kings, prophets, and the boldly assertive women of ancient Israel, as well as the four-fold gospel story of the life of Jesus—Price gave us a literal translation of the whole of the oldest gospel, Mark, in A Palpable God. Here he offers a reworking of his Mark, an entirely new literal version of the Gospel of John, and, remarkably, his own, "apocryphal" gospel, grounded meticulously in the earliest available historic, biographical, and theological evidence.

"While Price introduces his translation of the canonical gospels with a thorough exploration of the history of criticism of each, his translations are literal, though not wooden, renderings of the Greek manuscripts. For example, in Price's eloquent reading of John 3:16—'For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so all who trusted in him might not be lost but have eternal life'—the verse loses much of the antagonism and exclusivism of traditional translations. These beautiful renderings of the biblical stories that have so influenced the pitch and cadence of his own writing are Price's gifts of gratitude."—Library Journal